Line wise Analysis: 

My mother went with no more warning

The usage of the simple word "went" instead of the more obvious option - "died" - hints the reader to the presence of a slight detachment between the mother and the daughter (or the poet herself) and relates to the distance between the mother daughter relationship or relate to the sadness and hopelessness of death. ‘no more warning’ suggests that there was no time to build up or no chance to prepare.

than a bright voice and a bad pain.

The woman who is described in the poem could have been ill, and suffered from a bad pain prior to her death. This could have been for psychological or medical reasons. Parent’s would not want their children to know about their won pain, so the mother had kept a bight voice although she was ill, that’s why it was so sudden for the child.

Home from school on a June morning

June morning suggests that it was late spring which means that it was alive and warm. People usually go to school from home in mornings but the character is coming from school to home, this means that there could have been some trauma at home which caused the character to go back home. At this time the character was probably unaware of what trauma had happened and so is in a calm and relaxing mood.

And where the brook goes under the lane

Brook usually means a small stream which is gentle and trickling. Lane means a narrow road which is rural and relaxed. The 1st and 2nd line contrast the mood in the setting because the first 2 lines give a feeling of negativity where someone has passed away or is in extensive pain, whereas the next 2 line suggest that it is calm and relaxing through words like brook, June morning and lane.

I saw the back of a shocking white

’shocking white’ - Imagery contrast because white symbolizes peace but the word shocking with white could suggest an unexpected thing or an element of surprise. It is not coincidence that the word white has been used because white also represents death in some cultures and even that the mother got peace. ‘back’ means going away and so it means that someone was going away when the poet was left behind. There’s an emotion of anxiety, sorrow, being abandoned and sadness.

Ambulance drawing away from the gate.

There’s an element of surprise, or disturbance, due to the departure, as seen through the description, "a shocking white ambulance" - the use of "shocking" shows that it was out of place, and didn't belong. ‘drawing away’ means that the ambulance was backing away, with her mother, from the home that the poet and her mother once shared.

She never returned and I never saw

The repetition of the word never stresses the permanence of death. In this case, the child has never seen or spoken to her mother since the day the ambulance took her; she did not get to see her mother’s burial or she opted not to see it. This tell us the mother passed away.

Her buried. So a romance began.

Caesura is a pause between the line, in the first two line of this stanza, a caesura emphasizes no witness because the character can’t believe her mother is really dead.  I think the character didn’t want to see her mother buried because it would allow remembering the good bits of memories and manipulation of the truth. ‘her buried’ in another piece of incomplete information which allows for the creation of the lost woman. The ‘romance’ here could mean that a new form of love that has been born in the life of the child. The poet has no choice but to imagine that the love between her mother and her is still alive, it’s a new form romantic love born is her life.

The ivy-mother turned into a tree

This can represent the mother by showing that she was ivy growing on the ground, and when she passed away. Ivy has dull and pointed leaves, so the mother was unhappy and dull when she was alive. she rose and she was happier when she grew up to a tree. Ivy woman could mean false mother because of the cloying and controlling whereas tree could mean real mother because of the roots and stability. The memory of the mother has grown and they are she is sucked by the memories of the mother and wants to live with them.

That still hops away like a rainbow down

The words hop and rainbow suggest that the mother was free and happy when she was dead. The mention of a "rainbow" here alludes to the fact that no matter how close you get to one, you could never catch it - likewise, no matter how close the daughter got, she would never be able to catch her mother. A rainbow doesn’t end and the same way the romance has so began that it doesn’t want to end.

The avenue as I approach.

‘avenue’ and ‘approach’ could mean that she is going and moving near the mother through their memories. It could also mean that the mother’s memories (in form of a lively rainbow) is leading the poet’s life.

My tendrils are the ones that clutch.

Tendrils are often defined as a slender threadlike appendage of a climbing plant, often growing in a spiral form, that stretches out and twines around any suitable support. Here, the ivy fingers of the daughter are desperate of grab the tree which is the dead mother. It was her mother that was ivy, a climbing plant, with tendrils that would reach for support, but it is the daughter that is holding on too tightly, as seen through the word, "clutch." As a method of coping, the daughter fabricates a life for her mother, as seen in the third stanza.

I made a life for her over the years.

The word ‘made’ suggests the romanticized creation by the daughter for the mother. The child has made her mother as her role model. The girl is creating a new life for the mother because when she was alive she saw her mother struggling a lot and could not do what she wanted to. So, the girl creates an imaginary world to fulfill the dreams of the mother and dedicate her love towards her mother.

Frustrated no more by a dull marriage

The poets mother lived by an unhappy and boring marriage life which may have been due to marriage at early age. ‘Frustrated no more’ suggests the daughter imagines her ‘mother’ to be much better than she really was, as a result of their weak and distant relationship, as seen in the first stanza and the apparent out-of-reach set up. To get a reason for living she started the canteen. It was a support for her to live. ‘Dull marriage’ v/s ‘Romance’ - Romance is memories of the mother and herself and dull marriage represents frustrated and pulled down by the old memories left with her and the mother is no more.

She ran a canteen through several wars.

This shows that the girl runs a canteen in such a situation when resources are very less and limited because it is a war time. Although there is a war which is a barrier she is trying to continue with her life. Not as a soldier fighting the war, but she is running the canteen to contribute for the country. She was managing her house even though there was no man in the house. She does not need anyone to support her, she is self-driven, independent, hard working and dedicated to the family. Even though facing the challenges she manages to move on with life and run the canteen well.

The wit of a cliché-ridden village

Cliché-ridden means that her life was dull, monotonous and unexciting. The word ‘wit’ symbolizes the idea of the mother being wise in the village, the words ‘cliché’ mean that the village is outdated and boring, and monotonous.

She met her match at an extra-mural

She is trying to paint her life more exciting than how it actually is (imaginary mother). If we connect the mural as the match to the mother, the mother was different from other people in the village just like murals are different from other dull walls.

Way to portray their opposition towards the system through the paintings. These are very emphatic and mobilizing so it impacts many people. Connect to the mother who was opposing the social cultures. Murals were put over heroes when they die in Greece, so here it resembles a tribute to the mother, by the daughter.

Explicit - when she went for her studies in the climate of war, she found herself a perfect partner.

Class and the OU summer school.

Many a hero in his time

The word ‘many’ tells that there is now a generalized view vs the personal and subjective view earlier.  Due to the usage of words like ‘hero’ and ‘his’ which are masculine, they equate the poet as woman, heroic and herself. All woman has been desired and loved, be it a poet or a hero, women have inspired them to be heroic and strong or poetic. (Woman are referred to as ‘unsung heroes’).

And every poet has acquired

The poets around the world, have to be inspired by something of someone to start something. For this poet, it is her mother who gives her inspiration. Everyone have acquired a woman in their life. In this case, the poet has acquired a LOST woman.

A lost woman to haunt the home,

The mention of the "acquired lost woman" appeals to the reader, for while it mentions that only poets and heroes have them, the readers are invited to imagine the feeling of losing a woman, such as a sister, or a mother, or a girlfriend, while simultaneously making them realize that they don’t just haunt the home, but the life as well. (Haunt links to the ghost in last stanza.) Everyone at some point in life loose a woman. The

To be compensated and desired,

This says that the mother was very loved and cared for a person in household or works at home. Though only after he passed away did her daughter realize how important she was. Compensation could be thinking of the lost woman and repairing the damage done to the home after the woman was gone.

Who will not alter, who will not grow,

The anaphoric use of “who will not alter” gives rise to a dramatic feel, and refers to the evergreen description of her mother and her memories. The mother is gone, so she won’t be able to change her memories and won’t be victimized by the past. As well as the daunting fact that after death everything is at a standstill. In the phrase “who will not grow” grow could mean lifecycle where the memories of the mother are very alive and fresh.  With aging, the body withers away, but the mother is her memories is so etched that the mother will never grow old in the child’s memories.

A corpse they need never get to know.

The use of alliteration gives a negativity to the mood of the poem and points to the unimportance of true woman, and to romantic creation (lost woman) and the ivy on the tree. The mother doesn’t become the victim of old age and doesn’t become old in the memories, so, in the memories the mother is alive and not know her mother as a corpse but actually celebrate her mother.

She is nearly always benign. Her habit

‘Benign’ the Adjective is now less threat from the haunting of the dead mother. Though benign equates to cancer and growth. The poet feels abandoned by their mother, and so feels that the mother has harmed her in some way. There also were some times when the mother was scolding the poet, but the use of the words ‘nearly always’ mean that the schooling was for the child’s own good. Nearly could also mean not complete and so it could mean that there is a ray of hope that there will never be an end to this and the mother will always stay benign.

Is not to stride at dead of night.

Because the mother didn’t have a habit to roam about at night, not in ghostly figures and haunting the daughter, that are troublesome at night but she gives a positive feel. After she is dead, the memories of the dead mother are still harmless and she still doesn’t have nightmares of the mother. ‘Dead of night’ could mean things going out of control and the mother never did often scold her and get brutal.

Soft and crepuscular in rabbit-

While reading this line I connected to the white rabbit in Alice in the wonderland where he mistakes Alice for his housemaid Mary Ann and she becomes trapped in his house after growing too large. According to the German’s, the rabbit is connected to someone like a Santa, who brings joy and happiness. Easter bunny is also symbolized a judge if children have been good or naughty and respectively distributed gifts or goodies. The mother’s role as a judge, guide of mentor could describe how the mother would guide her and pull the child out of the dark memories.

Light she comes out. Hear how they hate

“rabbit Light”, her mother is shown as a gentle, harmless creature, and so, when she comes out during “rabbit light” she is seen as exactly that; a rabbit. Rabbit symbolizes the purity of a character, and she remembers her mother as a human of a beautiful character.

Themselves for losing her as they did.

The pronoun ‘themselves’ and ‘they’ differentiates the lost woman from those of others and the guilt the experience. This statement is a regret where the poet symbolizes the regret for all the poets who have lost a woman who was close to them, they would curse themselves for not having a beautiful relation but letting the woman all by herself. Now they just wish they could have done something and only the unsatisfied regret is heard by everyone now. *It also means that her mother is not lost to her and so she uses words like ‘they’ and ‘themselves’, and that she has nothing to regret about.

Her country is bland and she does not chide. 

‘Country’ relates to a going to the world of spirits and that world is bland because she has moved to another world where there is no liveliness. The poets mother thinks like this and says her country in bland, and also considering the daughter not able to move on and whatever she does is a lifeless, mundane thing. She looks at the daughter living a bland life, although it’s the mother in a bland country. She is unable to chide the child although she would love to do that.

But my lost woman evermore snaps

The pronoun ‘my’ differentiates from previously used ‘they’. ‘evermore’ indicates the constant nagging guilt of the daughter. ‘snaps’ is onomatopoeic which suggests the viscous ness and malice where the real woman. The mother is scolding the poet even more than before.

From somewhere else: ‘You did not love me.

The mother starts speaking to the daughter. The poem now contradicts all the ideas and the truth is revealed from this phrase onwards. The mother form a far land, has given a message to the poet to move on. The daughter yet, doesn’t love the mother very much and I want your wellbeing so I want to correct you.

I sacrificed too much perhaps,

The mother is saying that paying me a tribute by keeping yourself in the dark is not what I want, I want you to move on and have a beautiful life.

I showed you the way to rise above me

The sentence “I sacrificed… you took it” shows the displacement of their relationship. The mother sacrifices, and when given the chance, the daughter rises above her, leaving her mom behind. There is a comparison, the girl has become a ghost while chasing her mother who was actually a ghost. The mother wants the daughter to surpass the standards of living, fight her own battles and become happy.

And you took it. You are the ghost

“You are the ghost with the bat-voice” – this statement takes a dark turn, because it is the mother, deceased, accusing her daughter of being the ghost, a dead creature manifested as a living creature. Bats are creatures of dark; the daughter has gone so much in darkness that she is denying to come out of her mother’s memories.

With the bat-voice, my dear. I am not lost.’

“I am not lost” in this phrase the readers’ are forced to readjust their perspectives, realizing that all along it wasn’t the mother, but the daughter herself. There is a complete change in the perspective of the lost woman because the poet is lost in the pursuit of her mother and it wasn’t the mother who was lost. ‘bat voice’ - Imagery where sonar of a bat voice is used to feel out direction in the darkness.  The same way the mother wanted to give direction

Stanza wise Analysis: 

Stanza 1: The voice is first person and she (Patricia Beer) narrates what happened when her mother died. She also tells her experience when her mother died and sees the brook and describes the moment when the ambulance took her mother without her meeting her mother.

Stanza 2: Develops the complicated new found relationship between the mother and daughter. Through nature, the mother is personified, depicted as ivy, or a climbing evergreen, transforming into a tree; contrary to the fact that she, as a tree, is rooted to the ground.

Stanza 3: This stanza symbolizes the ideals for a free woman like no boring duty of husband, strength leader, wit humor and equality for love. The narrator creates an imagery of how her life would be if her mother hadn’t died and it shows that these visions were real for her (‘I made a life for her over the years’).

Stanza 4: The mother’s haunting becomes painfully clear. In this stanza the narrator says that everyone has lost a woman in their life. It could be someone whose you knew all your life like a mother, grandmother or sister. It could also be someone you barely knew like your ex-girlfriend.

Stanza 5: The daughter is living a lifeless life and wishing what could be done while the mother was still there. The stanza has a sad feel.

Stanza 6: The dead mother talks to her daughter where she says that she herself is not the lost woman but instead her daughter (Patricia Beer) is the lost woman because she couldn’t live without her.

Title:

According to me the word ‘lost’ in the title is ambiguous which could mean dead (mother) or direction in life (the daughter may miss the mother’s guidance) and the word ‘woman’ in the title is impersonal which reveals the frostiness or difficulty in the relationship of a mother and daughter. The title can be understood in 2 ways, the mother and the daughter. The title foreshadows the themes of the poem – alienation, dead etc. The title shows the mother was lost, but the poem reveals that the daughter was lost. The word ‘the’ makes the lost woman very particular such as the mother in beginning and the daughter in the end. There is a sense of definiteness in the title which misleads the readers in the middle. The use of ellipses in the title of the poem suggests that there is something more to the lost woman and it is incomplete, the same is depicted in the last stanza of the poem, because the incompleteness is always going to remain with the daughter as she has physically lost the mother. It could mean that the poem is incomplete without the mother and the poem is not yet complete.

Literary Analysis:

Firstly, the language used in the beginning of the poem is quite typical, however as the speaker starts to create her own version of her mother, the language changes slightly. The speaker creates and image of how her mother met her husband in war (15-18). She also portrays her mother as something better than she thought she was, they had a tenuous mother-daughter relationship hence the fictitious fantasies. All the imagery is visceral. The poet uses half rhymes to give a bit of a sinister and unsettling effect, the fact that the whole poem is arranged in six stanzas each with six lines also gives this effect. The rhyme scheme used consists of half rhymes such as ‘pain, lane’ (2,4) and ‘acquired, desired’ (20,22) delineates a sonic pattern as they are each two lines apart, this consists in most stanzas. The poet uses words like ‘shocking white’ to illustrate not only the fact that the entire thing was scandalous, but that the ambulance itself brought out a disturbing aroma. The speaker says her ‘ivy-mother turned into a tree’ which shows her feeling towards the mother. In the beginning, the poet portrays and effect of confusion and sadness at the start: ‘my mother went’ instead of simply saying ‘my mother died.’

Structure:

There are 6 stanzas in the poem with 6 lines in each stanza. The poem consists only 17 sentences. The orderliness points out the sense of harmony and the perfection of the character of the mother. The first stanza starts with separation between the mother and daughter when the mother dies. The second stanza has a union with the mother and the imaginary world of the daughter. And the theme of union continues till the 5^th stanza. In the 6^th stanza there is a theme of union (‘I am not lost’) and separation (‘from somewhere else’) both.  Union with herself(self-realization) and physical separation from the mother ends the poem and the poet has accepted that the physical separation is going to be with her.  The poem uses half rhymes (ababcc). There is a use of half rhymes because of the obstructions and the unsettling effect, it doesn’t have an effect of smoothness. It tells us that the union of the daughter and a mother is incomplete.

  

Style:

There is a use of elegy in the poem. There are 3 stages in an elegy; grief on someone’s death, praising, and consolation (moving on). In this poem the mother is gone in the starting of the poem, the daughter praises her mother and remembers her mother’s memories in the middle of the poem and at the end, in the last stanza, the daughter is moving on from the mother’s death. The setting of a poem suggests certain elements that are used in gothic poetry (sense of eeriness, death, sorrow and spookiness.) The phrases such as ‘bat voice’, ‘shocking white ambulance’, ‘never saw her buried’, ‘ghost that haunt’. ‘stride at dead of night’ etc. show traces of gothic poetry in the poem.

Tone:

Difficult to explain, but perhaps we can say a strained form of respect intermixed with guilt. We lurch from respect and romanticizing to acknowledgement of the difficult nature of their relationship and neither come out as overpowering the other.The main story revolves around parental love and one of the main tone is the detachment because after she loses her mother, she doesn’t move on easily and is lost in her imagination. The child feels abandoned (my mother went with no more warning).

Theme:

Loss and Grief – ‘mother went’, ‘she never returned’, ‘imagination, frustrated’, ‘haunt (lost woman), many a hero’, ‘acquired’. The daughter physically lost the mother but actually it’s the mother who is losing her daughter from the reality of the world.  The poem is turning around the loss of self in the pursuit of something that is completely imaginary.

Regret – ‘bright voice’, ‘bad pain’, ‘who will not alter’. ‘who will not grow’, ‘dull marriage’, ‘you did not love me’, ‘she never returned’. The poet probably regrets that she never got a chance to say anything to her mother and she wishes she could alter the past to avoid the sorrow.

Family and Parental Love – ‘showed you the way’, ‘sacrificed too much’, made a life for’. The love and bonding in family is too strong that the mother guides the daughter even after she is gone.

Death – ‘went with no more warning’, ‘you are the ghost’. The death can be understood in 2 ways, the mother and the daughter because first the mother leaves but at the end, it’s the daughter who is actually lost and indirectly dead.

Affection and Deception – The love between the daughter and the mother in her memories. The action of deceiving and the daughter living in an illusionary world.

Immortality of Love – ‘a new romance began’, ‘mother went with no more warning (more obvious word is died of left instead of went)’, ‘I made a life over hers’, ‘you did not love me’, ‘her country is bland and she does not chide’. The poet feels immortality of love for her mother, because this is going to be with the daughter forever, throughout her life.

Thank you, 

Done by Anjali Jakasania